Benjamin Hills

Benjamin Hills

Geophysicist & Glaciologist

Colorado School of Mines




I am interested in the physics of Earth systems. In particular, my research has focused on the fluid dynamics and solid mechanics of ice as an Earth material. I use ice-penetrating radar to survey the ice sheets, their geometry, flow, properties, and the associated implications for sea-level rise. I also have growing interests in planetary ice and planetary analogs on Earth. I believe in and try to practice open science, with free access to data, code, and manuscripts.

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Research Interests

Ice Temperature

Ice Temperature

Heat transfer, ice viscosity, and radar attenuation.

Crystal Fabric

Crystal Fabric

Ice crystal anisotropy and radar polarimetry.

Planetary

Planetary

Extraterrestrial ice and analogs on Earth

Geophysical Tools

Geophysical Tools

Instrument design and software for radar processing.

Alpine Glaciology

Alpine Glaciology

Mountain glacier mass balance and glacier dynamics.

Drilling in Ice

Drilling in Ice

Thermal drilling in theory and in practice.

Teaching

I enjoy teaching from Jupyter Notebooks. I use Binder, so each of the links to the right takes you to a ‘hub’ with a precompiled anaconda environment and jupyter notebooks executable on a remote server. Please feel free to take and use these notebooks from the associated github repositories, no permission necessary.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

(2024). Radar-derived crystal orientation fabric suggests dynamic stability at the summit of Hercules Dome during the last ice-sheet deglaciation. In Review.

Project Project

(2023). Effective diffusivity of sulfuric acid in Antarctic ice cores. In Clim. Past.

PDF Cite Project DOI

(2023). Scars of tectonic extension promote ice-sheet nucleation from Hercules Dome, West Antarctica. In Nat Geosci.

PDF Cite Dataset Project Project DOI